Caroline M.
Photography by Emma Kraus
If you’re reading this, know that you are so deserving of the grace you give to others.
I spent a while thinking about how to start this letter. I thought of twenty different things I’d want to start with, affirmations to tell you, reminders of how very much not alone you are, how beautiful it is to be flawed and human and entirely you.
I thought about what I needed to hear time and time again throughout medical school. I pictured myself as an M1, crying in my roommate’s arms after failing an exam. I remembered the fury I felt for not being pre-med in college, for being an Italian major, for how the time writing essays and reading made the physiology-heavy exams feel foreign and impossible.
I envisioned myself just a few days after this failed exam, knowing I had only weeks before the first of my two scheduled surgeries to somehow learn another block of curriculum and pass an exam that I was now terrified of. My mind skips to me in physical therapy a month later, willing my body to sync with my crutches – feeling frustrated at the years of ballet that wore away at my cartilage, that led me to this huge obstacle during my medical school years.
What did M2 me need to hear? When I was cursing myself for never having high enough practice Step 1 scores, when all I needed to do was follow a simple algorithm that had worked so well for so many others? What words would have helped me as I angrily sat at my desk during the beginning of a global pandemic, feeling that I was giving nothing back to the people who were sick?
You are so deserving of the grace you give to others. I want to tell it to all past versions of me, and to remind you of this, too.
I noticed the empathy and compassion that guided my interactions with patients my third year. Of course they couldn’t take their medications daily; they were grieving a loved one. How could one possibly focus on diabetes management while they felt so utterly isolated and alone?
I spoke with my friends on the phone, telling them to be kind to themselves, to be gentle. I reminded them that all we can ask of ourselves is that we focus on putting one foot in front of the other. I told them that they are loved, valued, worthy.
It took the better part of my third year to realize that I was depriving myself of this own grace.
How cruel I was being, picking apart my own story and anchoring only on the negatives, on the reasons why I was less-than. It was a narrative in which there was no place for the joy that doing ballet for sixteen years brought me, how at my deepest core I have been and always will be a dancer. I focused on my academic deficits rather than appreciating how easily Spanish came back to me on my family medicine rotation, how I was able to converse with patients while the interpreter was being dialed and watch their eyes light up as I tried to speak their language.
If I could remind you of anything, it is to give yourself this same grace.
Your narrative is beautifully complex, and reducing it to solely the parts you don’t like isn’t doing it justice. We move through medical school holding ourselves to impossible standards – not pausing to applaud ourselves when we meet them and tearing ourselves down when we fall short. Embrace your mistakes and your flaws. Your patients will connect to this unpolished, more human you.
You will connect to this unpolished, more human you.
It’s taken me a long time to learn this lesson, and I am far from mastering it so let’s practice lending ourselves the same kindness, forgiveness, and empathy we would for each other. We are all so very deserving of it.
Caroline M., Boston University
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